"Lisp w/o a brain"

"Lisp w/o a brain"

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Bulent Murtezaogl#1 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

I came across this while mindlessly browsing the web. Abelson's (one of SICP authors) name appears as one of the authors of the document. You want to scroll down all the way down to find the section "Lisp w/o a brain." I thought it was interesting (more so than ways of getting f.....g books to Germany):

http://www.*-*-*.com/

cheers,

BM

Fri, 19 Apr 2002 03:00:00 GMT

Rainer Josw#2 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

Quote:

> I came across this while mindlessly browsing the web. Abelson's (one of > SICP authors) name appears as one of the authors of the document. You want > to scroll down all the way down to find the section "Lisp w/o a brain." > I thought it was interesting (more so than ways of getting f.....g books > to Germany):

> http://6916.lcs.mit.edu/manuals/tcl/introduction.adp

> cheers,

> BM

So instead you are posting more FUD? Interesting.

Fri, 19 Apr 2002 03:00:00 GMT

Barry Margoli#3 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

Quote:

>> I came across this while mindlessly browsing the web. Abelson's (one of >> SICP authors) name appears as one of the authors of the document. You want >> to scroll down all the way down to find the section "Lisp w/o a brain." >> I thought it was interesting (more so than ways of getting f.....g books >> to Germany):

>> http://6916.lcs.mit.edu/manuals/tcl/introduction.adp >So instead you are posting more FUD? Interesting.

Actually, that section of the book is basically just a brief restatement of the "Worse is Better" philosophy that we're all too familiar with.

> SICP authors) name appears as one of the authors of the document. You want > to scroll down all the way down to find the section "Lisp w/o a brain." [...] > http://6916.lcs.mit.edu/manuals/tcl/introduction.adp

Near the end of the document the authors state:

"Lisp developers have the satisfaction of knowing that they got it right 30 years before anyone else. But that's about all they have to show for 40 years of hard work and hundreds of millions of dollars in government and private funding."

It would be interesting to estimate the cost of the "Lisp wheel reinvention" activity that has been going on in the industry for decades.

I'm looking for a general representation/method to solve problems like "Who Owns the Zebra" using LISP in any flavor. I have the solution in PROLOG, it is very specific, and doesn't separate the data and the constraints (rules). I'm not looking for code so much as generalized method. I'd appreciate any pointers and pseudo-code (meta-linguistic abstraction) to help me kick-start it.

Thanx, Hank Simon

Here's the problem for those who haven't seen it. It takes about 20 minutes to solve using a manual, matrix-fill-in approach.

Who Owns the Zebra? 1. There are 5 houses of different color on a street, the inhabitants are of different nationalities, different pets, smoke different cigarettes and drink different drinks. 2. The Englishman lives in the Red House. 3. The Spaniard owns the dog. 4. Coffee is drunk by the man living in the Green House. 5. The Ukranian drinks tea. 6. The Green House is to your right of the Ivory House. 7. The man who smokes Old Gold owns Snails. 8. The man who smokes Kools lives in the Yellow House. 9. The man in the middle house drinks milk. 10. The Norwegian lives in the first house on the left. 11. The man who smokes Chesterfields, lives next to the man who owns the fox. 12. The man who smokes Kools, lives next to the man who owns the horse. 13. The man who smokes Lucky Strikes, drinks orange juice. 14. The Japanese smokes Parliaments 15. The Norwegian lives next to the Blue House. Who drinks Water and Who owns the Zebra?

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy.

Sun, 21 Apr 2002 03:00:00 GMT

Jim Dries#6 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

Quote:

> I'm looking for a general representation/method to solve problems like > "Who Owns the Zebra" using LISP in any flavor.

[deleted]

Try _Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence: Case Studies in Common Lisp_ by Peter Norvig. He solved this problem by first implementing Prolog in Lisp and using the Zebra problem to test the interpreter. The code is available on line at:

http://www.norvig.com

This is one of my favorite books.

Regards,

Jim Driese

Sun, 21 Apr 2002 03:00:00 GMT

Jeff Dalto#7 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

It looks like a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), and it's not very hard to write a CSP engine in Lisp. Indeed, someone ought to do this, in a way that allowed the algorithm to be plugged-in (because there are so many CSP algoroithms around), and make it available on the net (if someone hasn't already done so).

Tue, 23 Apr 2002 03:00:00 GMT

Reini Urb#8 / 9

"Lisp w/o a brain"

Quote:

>It looks like a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP), and it's >not very hard to write a CSP engine in Lisp. Indeed, someone ought >to do this, in a way that allowed the algorithm to be plugged-in >(because there are so many CSP algoroithms around), and make it >available on the net (if someone hasn't already done so).

http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/constraints/deltablue/ has a common lisp implementation. But I doubt if it can be applied to the Zebra problem. -- Reini Urban http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/autocad/news/faq/autolisp.html